Trump And Miller Left Biden With Unfinished Immigration Business

2021/02/10 Leave a comment

Of note:

Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and the rest of the Trump immigration squad left the Biden administration with a lot of unfinished business, only some of which has garnered newspaper headlines. The Biden administration has moved quickly on several high-profile issues, including protection for refugees and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients. However, the list of immigration issues that requires attention after four years is long. Below are some of the most significant issues.

Stephen Miller’s Department of Labor Rule: Jyoti Bansal came to America on an H-1B visa. “I waited seven years for my employment-based green card [due to the per-country limit] and I wanted to leave my job and start a new company but couldn’t,” Bansal told me in an interview. “What is most frustrating about the green card process is you have no control over a major part of your life.”

In the final days of Donald Trump’s term, as part of a longstanding goal to price out of the U.S. labor market employment-based immigrants, international students and H-1B visa holders, White House adviser Stephen Miller and other members of the Trump immigration team pushed through a final rule on wages from the Department of Labor (DOL). The rule would significantly boost the required minimum or “prevailing” wage employers must pay employment-based immigrants and H-1B visa holders by 24% to 40% across a range of occupations, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy.

If the DOL rule had been in effect years ago, Jyoti Bansal likely would never have been able to come to America, nor would the many people who played critical roles in developing the Covid-19 vaccines and came to (or remained in) America on H-1B visas and employment-based green cards.

In 2007, Bansal received an employment authorization document (EAD) as part of the green card process. He later left his employer and started AppDynamics. The company, which monitors websites for clients such as HBO, has grown to employ over 2,000 people and was valued at $3.7 billion when Cisco acquired it in 2017.

The DOL final rule cites Donald Trump’s anti-immigration “Buy American and Hire American” executive order for the regulation’s “justification,” its “need” and the “Objectives of and Legal Basis for the Final Rule.” However, on January 25, 2021, President Biden revoked Trump’s “Buy American and Hire American” executive order. In other words, the authority cited for the DOL final rule by Trump’s Department of Labor no longer exists. The nation’s leading anti-immigration group, which has called for a “permanent pause” on immigration to America, has praised the DOL rule. This should not be a difficult choice for the Biden administration on what to do with the rule.

An Agenda on International Students: It is too soon to expect a full agenda from the Biden administration on international students. Rescinding the DOL wage rule would help attract students, since the rule makes it far less likely international students could get a work visa or permanent residence in the United States. There are other pressing student issues.

First, processing delays in Optional Practical Training (OPT) have bedeviled international students, particularly at the Texas Service Center Lockbox. Without a receipt, students can lose their status. (Attorneys have reported some improvements.) The Biden administration disbanded a last-minute effort by the Trump administration to establish a new unit to go after international students working on OPT, which may facilitate more targeted enforcement against bad actors, rather than a generalized effort against all students working on OPT.

Second, the Trump administration’s student policies left in place from 2020 may need to be adapted to the current situation. “After a concerted advocacy effort by the higher education community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that international students should ’continue to abide’ by emergency pandemic guidance that allows them to take all or some of their courses online,” according to a letter from the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “We strongly support this guidance because without it, a large number of international students still in the United States during the pandemic would have had to take classes in person or leave–neither tenable as COVID cases rise and the pandemic is still prevalent.

“However, DHS has still not issued additional guidance that would allow all international students, including those who were not already enrolled during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020 but have since enrolled or who will enroll, to enter and remain in the United States. Current guidance stipulates that if a new international student’s courses are online, they are prohibited from entering the United States or must depart the country. This policy is a substantial problem for programs with students living in different time zones.”

Universities would like updates to the policy, including “explicitly allowing initial international students to enter the country, as well as permitting existing students to remain in the United States when enrolled in online-only courses (as opposed to currently only allowing students enrolled in hybrid courses to enter).”

A recent survey found that during Fall 2020, “new enrollment of international students physically in the United States declined by 72%,” more than the 43% drop in foreign enrollment overall because students started online overseas.

If the Biden administration is looking for policy suggestions for a broader agenda on international students, NAFSA: Association of International Educators has put one together. The recommendations include a series of administrative and legislative actions to “establish a welcoming environment for international students and scholars.”

The Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders and Long USCIS Processing Times for Work Authorization: The Trump administration was unsuccessful in its plans to rescind the Obama administration’s rule on H-4 EAD (employment authorization document). A lawsuit (Kolluri v. USCIS) credibly alleges that USCIS put in place an unnecessary biometrics requirement to prevent the applicants, mostly women from India, from working in the United States. The California Service Center is taking up to two years to process an extension for work authorization. Another lawsuit charges current USCIS policies make it “mathematically” impossible for the spouses to continue working because extension applications cannot be processed in time.

Startup Visas and the International Entrepreneur Rule: The Biden administration’s outline on immigration legislation did not include a startup visa that would allow foreign nationals to gain green cards after demonstrating they have started a business that creates a threshold number of jobs. Congress can add that to any proposal. In the meantime, the administration can revive the International Entrepreneur Rule.

A letter from a coalition that includes the National Venture Capital Association, FWD.us, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the National Immigration Forum and others asks DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Majorkas “to implement the International Entrepreneur Rule . . . . originally put in place at the end of the Obama Administration, would work similar to a Startup Visa by allowing world-class foreign entrepreneurs to launch high-growth companies in the United States by utilizing the parole authority of DHS.”

A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute finds implementing the International Entrepreneur Rule could lead to significant job creation. A study last year from the National Foundation for American Policy examined the international experience and concluded startup visas for foreign-born entrepreneurs can bring jobs and innovation to a country.

It may take years for the Biden administration to undo many of the immigration policies implemented over the last four years. Addressing some of the issues not making front-page news will improve the chances the effort will be successful.

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Biden White House Aims To Advance Racial Equity With Executive Actions

2021/01/28 Leave a comment

Of note and interest given the broad yet specific focus, not just limited to employment equity within government:

Saying it’s time to act “because that’s what faith and morality require us to do,” President Biden on Tuesday signed four executive actions aimed at advancing racial equity for Americans the White House says have been underserved and left behind.

Biden said Tuesday that the measures follow one of his core campaign promises: to restore “the soul of the nation,” as he often said during the presidential race.

“Our soul will be troubled,” he said, “as long as systemic racism is allowed to exist.”

In announcing the actions, Biden cited the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer last May, which touched off demonstrations in cities across the United States. Biden called the killing “the knee on the neck of justice,” and said that because of it, “the ground has shifted. It changed minds and mindsets.”

The four executive actions Biden signed:

  • direct the Department of Housing and Urban Development “to take steps necessary to redress racially discriminatory federal housing policies”;
  • direct the Department of Justice to end its use of private prisons;
  • reaffirm the federal government’s “commitment to tribal sovereignty and consultation”:
  • and combat xenophobia against Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

Before the signing ceremony, Biden also called for restoring and extending the Voting Rights Act, but announced no new initiatives regarding ballot access. Some state legislatures are seeking to restrict access in the aftermath of November’s elections.

Earlier, domestic policy adviser Susan Rice told reporters that “advancing equity is a critical part of healing and of restoring unity in our nation.”

Rice cited a 2016 Department of Justice inspector general’s report that she said found private prisons are “less safe, less secure and arguably less humane.” She said Biden is committed to reducing incarceration levels “while making communities safer,” which she said starts with not issuing any new federal contracts for private prisons. But Rice said the order does not apply to private prisons used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The ACLU called Biden’s action on private prisons “an important first step,” but that he “has an obligation to do more, especially given his history and promises.”

According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, a little over 14,000 federal inmates are currently in privately managed facilities. That’s 9% of total federal inmates.

In a statement, the Day 1 Alliance, a trade association representing private detention facilities, said Biden’s action “is a misguided attempt to blame longtime government contractors for a ‘mass incarceration’ problem they actually play zero role in driving.”

The White House said the presidential memorandum on housing directs HUD to “examine the effects of the Trump administration’s regulatory actions that undermined fair housing policies and laws,” and the measure also “recognizes the central role the federal government has played implementing housing policies across the United States, from redlining to mortgage discrimination to destructive federal highway construction, that have had racially discriminatory impacts.”

The Biden administration says the executive action on tribal sovereignty shows its commitment “to re-establishing federal respect for Tribal sovereignty, strengthening the Nation-to-Nation relationship between the federal government and American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes, empowering self-determination, and advancing racial justice for Native communities.” The order, the White House says, “reinvigorates the commitment of all federal agencies to engage in regular, robust, and meaningful consultation with Tribal governments.”

Biden’s presidential memorandum on Asian American and Pacific Islanders establishes that the policy of the administration “is to condemn and denounce anti-Asian bias and discrimination,” which Biden called “unacceptable and un-American.”

Hate crimes against Asian Americans rose along with the spread of the coronavirus, which emerged from China. Former President Donald Trump routinely referred to it as “the China virus.”

The memorandum directs the Department of Health and Human Services “to consider issuing guidance describing best practices to advance cultural competency, language access, and sensitivity towards AAPIs in the federal government’s COVID-19 response.” It also directs the Department of Justice to work with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities “to prevent hate crimes and harassment against AAPIs.”

Tuesday’s measures continue Biden’s rollout of more than 20 executive actions in his administration’s first days.

One executive action signed last week requires all federal departments and agencies to look for ways to address racial equity.

And a senior government official, who spoke to reporters Tuesday on the condition of not being identified, said, “This is not the end of our work on racial equity,” adding that “we’ll have a lot more work to do in the coming weeks and months.”

Source: Biden White House Aims To Advance Racial Equity With Executive Actions

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Biden wants to remove this controversial word from US laws

2021/01/23 Leave a comment

Words matter:

It’s just one small part of the sweeping immigration overhaul President Biden is pushing.

But the symbolic significance is huge.

Biden’s proposed bill, if passed, would remove the word “alien” from US immigration laws, replacing it with the term “noncitizen.”
 
It’s a deliberate step intended to recognize America as “a nation of immigrants,” according to a summary of the bill released by the new administration.
 
The term “illegal alien,” long decried as a dehumanizing slur by immigrant rights advocates, became even more of a lightning rod during the Trump era — with some top federal officials encouraging its use and several states and local governments taking up measures to ban it.
 
“The language change on the first day of this administration, with Kamala Harris the daughter of immigrants, to me it’s not just symbolic…it’s foundational,” says Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented immigrant whose organization, Define American, pushes for more accurate portrayals of immigrants.
 
“How we describe people really sticks. It affects how we treat them,” he says. “How we talk about immigrants shapes the policies. It frames what are the issues really at stake here. It acknowledges that we’re talking about human beings and families.”

What the laws say now

US code currently defines “alien” as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”
 
Officials in the past have pointed to the term’s prevalence in US laws to defend their word choices.
 
In 2018, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed prosecutors to refer to someone who’s illegally in the United States as “an illegal alien,” citing the US code in an agency-wide email.
 
The term “alien” was often invoked by President Trump in speeches as he warned of what he saw as the dangers of unchecked illegal immigration.
 
Speaking at the Mexico border last week in one of his final addresses as president, Trump used the term at least five times.
 
“We were in the Trump administration the perennial boogeyman,” Vargas said.
 
“Whenever Trump was in trouble, he started talking about the ‘illegals’ and talking about the border.”
 
But not everyone in the Trump administration was a fan of the language.
 
In an interview with the Washington Post published shortly before he resigned as acting secretary of Homeland Security in 2019, Kevin McAleenan told the newspaper he avoided using the term “illegal aliens” and instead described people as “migrants.”
 
“I think the words matter a lot,” McAleenan said, according to the Post. “If you alienate half of your audience by your use of terminology, it’s going to hamper your ability to ever win an argument.”

This isn’t the first effort to change such wording

California struck “alien” from the state’s labor code in 2015.
 
New York City removed the term from its charter and administrative code last year.
 
Throughout President Trump’s time in office, immigrant advocates criticized dehumanizing rhetoric.
In guidelines issued in 2019, New York City banned the term “illegal alien” when used “with intent to demean, humiliate or harass a person.” Violations, the city warned, could result in fines up to $250,000.
 
And last year two Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to replace the term “illegal alien” with “undocumented immigrant.” The bill never made it to the state Senate floor for a vote.

Prank callers targeted the term early in the Trump administration

One of the first times the use of the term “alien” drew widespread attention during the Trump administration was in 2017 after officials publicized a hotline for victims of “crimes committed by removable aliens.”
 
Prank callers swiftly flooded the line with reports about space aliens, sharing examples on social media of their comments about Martians and UFOs.
 
But Vargas says the term and others used to demonize immigrants are no laughing matter.
 
“Language has power. And I think we saw that in the Trump administration, how it used dehumanizing terms and how it debased language and in turn debased people,” Vargas says. “If you call them ‘alien,’ of course you’re going to put them in jail, of course you’re going to lock them up, of course you’re not going to care that you’re separating little kids from their parents.”
 
Vargas says the new administration’s effort to use more respectful language gives him hope that some Americans’ views on undocumented immigrants could also shift. Changing just one word, he says, could have a far-reaching impact for millions of people.
 
Source: Biden wants to remove this controversial word from US laws

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Rioux: Réconcilier les Américains?

2021/01/23 Leave a comment

Rioux on what he perceives to the the extreme left in the USA and his attack against programs targeted towards minority communities. A caricature of these programs and an ignorance of the reality lived by those communities, not to mention the ample evidence of worse economic and social outcomes.

Of course, it is a political risk, but one that has historical and current justifications, particularly after the Trump presidency.

And should the general policy changes work (economic recovery, COVID measures, immigration reform etc) unlikely that there will be major negative political consequences despite some of the political rhetoric:

Lorsqu’il a juré sur la Bible, perché sur les hauteurs du Capitole devant des rangées de drapeaux plantés dans le sol, Joe Biden avait l’air bien seul. Le nouveau président américain a évidemment juré de rassembler l’Amérique et les Américains. Les accents paraissaient souvent sincères. Mais le pourra-t-il ?

Pour ce faire, ce vieux membre de l’establishment démocrate peut miser sur sa longue expérience de négociateur. Mais il lui faudra pour cela prendre en compte le fossé grandissant qui sépare le peuple américain de ses élites et qui a servi de marchepied à Donald Trump pour se hisser au pouvoir.

Lorsqu’on veut se réconcilier avec quelqu’un, il faut commencer par le traiter poliment et éviter de l’insulter. En jouant l’hyperbole sur les événements du Capitole, les démocrates et les médias n’ont fait pour l’instant que jeter de l’huile sur le feu. Si cette profanation d’un lieu sacré de la démocratie est un geste gravissime, il faut une imagination débridée pour comparer ces personnages de carnaval venus faire des égoportraits dans le bureau de Nancy Pelosi aux marins de Kronstadt, aux milices de la Nuit de cristal ou aux incendiaires du Reichstag.

La génération des « safe spaces » biberonnée aux jeux vidéo a peut-être eu des sueurs froides. Mais ce qui s’est passé le 6 janvier a plus à voir avec la jacquerie des gilets jaunes français qu’avec une insurrection ou une tentative de coup d’État. En novembre 2018, les gilets jaunes avaient bien tenté d’envahir l’Élysée. La garde républicaine eût-elle été aussi empotée que la police américaine, les manifestants auraient paradé en Robespierre dans le bureau d’Emmanuel Macron. Mais ce n’aurait été qu’une parodie de révolution.

Nous avons assisté en direct au suicide politique du Dr Folamour qui a dirigé les États-Unis pendant quatre ans. Dans cette société éminemment violente qu’ont toujours été les États-Unis, le geste répond, comme en miroir, aux longues semaines d’émeutes qui ont suivi l’assassinat de George Floyd et qui ont fait, elles, une trentaine de morts. Avec la bénédiction de nombreux élus démocrates !

Il faut néanmoins reconnaître les efforts que Joe Biden a déployés pour reconquérir les États de la Rust Belt que Trump avait ravis aux démocrates en 2016. Mais ces gains ne seront que de courte durée si le président persiste à obéir à son extrême gauche en introduisant, notamment, des critères raciaux dans le programme de relance du pays. Un programme conçu, dit-il, « spécifiquement pour aider les entreprises possédées par des Noirs et des Bruns » (Black and Brown people). Des mots dignes d’un nouvel apartheid !

Peu importent les appels du président à la réconciliation, cette pensée racialiste est la recette parfaite de la guerre civile. En Oregon, le fonds de 62 millions destiné à aider spécifiquement « les citoyens et propriétaires d’entreprises noirs » est d’ailleurs l’objet de poursuites devant les tribunaux. Car cette épidémie « n’est pas une affaire de Blancs ou de Noirs. C’est l’affaire de tout le monde », a déclaré l’entrepreneur d’origine hispanique Walter Leja, qui fait partie des plaignants.

Joe Biden ne peut pas ignorer que, selon l’Institut Gallup, 74 % des Américains sont contre l’utilisation de critères raciaux dans l’embauche. Un consensus confirmé en novembre par le rejet, pour une seconde fois en 25 ans, de la proposition 16 en Californie. Soutenue par les lobbies ethniques et les grandes entreprises, elle visait à réintroduire ce qu’on nomme là-bas la « discrimination positive » dans l’emploi, l’éducation et l’octroi des contrats publics.

Or, cette réaffirmation des principes d’égalité républicaine ne vient pas cette fois des perdants de la mondialisation, ceux-là mêmes qu’Hillary Clinton avait qualifiés de « déplorables ». Elle vient de l’un des États les plus modernes, les plus multiethniques et qui est de plus un fief démocrate. Aux États-Unis, l’attachement au principe de l’égalité républicaine dépasse de loin les 74 millions d’électeurs de Donald Trump. Il est même un des fondements du pays. Biden ne pourra pas le renier sans en subir les conséquences.

« Réconcilier l’Amérique », cela ne se fera pas non plus en légitimant la censure pratiquée par ces milliardaires du numérique alliés aux démocrates qui, du haut de leur supériorité morale, ont supprimé les comptes d’un président démocratiquement élu. Cette nouvelle alliance de la « cancel culture » avec les magnats des GAFA a de quoi faire se retourner dans leurs tombes tous les « progressistes » d’hier et d’avant-hier.

Joe Biden ne doit pas se tromper sur les raisons qui lui ont permis de l’emporter de justesse au Sénat et au Congrès. Si les Américains ont voulu se débarrasser d’un président égocentrique, incohérent et narcissique, ils n’ont pas plébiscité la politique racialiste et la culture de l’Index que caresse la gauche du Parti démocrate.

Réconcilier l’Amérique suppose que l’on croie dans la nation et une citoyenneté qui ne soit pas fondée sur des critères raciaux. Faute de tenir compte de ces avertissements, l’épisode Biden pourrait bien prendre fin dans deux ans, à l’occasion des élections de mi-mandat. Et la guerre civile larvée symbolisée par l’émeute du Capitole se poursuivra de plus belle.

Source: TO ADD

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Biden bets big on immigration changes in opening move

2021/01/22 Leave a comment

Good overview:

For the opening salvo of his presidency, few expected Joe Biden to be so far-reaching on immigration.

A raft of executive orders signed Wednesday undoes many of his predecessor’s hallmark initiatives, such as halting work on a border wall with Mexico, lifting a travel ban on people from several predominantly Muslim countries and reversing plans to exclude people in the country illegally from the 2020 census.

Six of Biden’s 17 orders, memorandums and proclamations deal with immigration. He ordered efforts to preserve Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program known as DACA that has shielded hundreds of thousands of people who came to the U.S. as children from deportation since it was introduced in 2012. He also extended temporary legal status to Liberians who fled civil war and the Ebola outbreak to June 2022.

The Homeland Security Department announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations “for certain noncitizens,” starting Friday, after Biden revoked one of Trump’s earliest executive orders making anyone in the country illegally a priority for deportations.

That’s not it. Biden’s most ambitious proposal, unveiled Wednesday, is an immigration bill that would give legal status and a path to citizenship to anyone in the United States before Jan. 1 — an estimated 11 million people — and reduce the time that family members must wait outside the United States for green cards.

Taken together, Biden’s moves represent a sharp U-turn after four years of relentless strikes against immigration, captured most vividly by the separation of thousands of children from their parents under a “zero tolerance” policy on illegal border crossings. Former President Donald Trump’s administration also took hundreds of other steps to enhance enforcement, limit eligibility for asylum and cut legal immigration.

The new president dispelled any belief that his policies would resemble those of former President Barack Obama, who promised a sweeping bill his first year in office but waited five years while logging more than 2 million deportations.

Eager to avoid a rush on the border, Biden aides signaled that it will take time to unwind some of Trump’s border policies, which include making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. Homeland Security said that on Thursday it would stop sending asylum-seekers back to Mexico to wait for hearings but that people already returned should stay put for now.

It “will take months to be fully up and running in terms of being able to do the kind of asylum processing that we want to be able to do,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, told reporters.

Despite the deliberative pace in some areas, Biden’s moves left pro-immigration advocates overjoyed. Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, called the legislation “the most progressive legalization bill in history.”

“We made it,” she said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters. “We made this day happen.”

It is even more striking because immigration got scarce mention during the campaign, and the issue has divided Republicans and Democrats, even within their own parties. Legislative efforts failed in 2007 and 2013.

More favorable attitudes toward immigration — especially among Democrats — may weigh in Biden’s favor. A Gallup survey last year found that 34% of those polled supported more immigration, up from 21% in 2016 and higher than any time since Gallup began asking the question in 1965.

Seven in 10 voters said they preferred offering immigrants in the U.S. illegally a chance to apply for legal status, compared with about 3 in 10 who thought they should be deported to the country they came from, according to AP VoteCast. The survey of more than 110,000 voters in November showed 9 in 10 Biden voters but just about half of Trump voters were in favor of a path to legal status.

Under the bill, most people would wait eight years for citizenship but those enrolled in DACA, those with temporary protective status for fleeing strife-torn countries and farmworkers would wait three years.

The bill also offers development aid to Central America, reduces the 1.2 million-case backlog in immigration courts and provides more visas for underrepresented countries and crime victims.

The proposal would let eligible family members wait in the United States for green cards by granting temporary status until their petitions are processed — a population that Kerri Talbot of advocacy group Immigration Hub estimates at 4 million.

Unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens who have been waiting outside the country for more than six years are just getting their numbers called this month. Waits are even longer for some nationalities. Married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens from Mexico have been waiting outside the United States since August 1996.

The bill faces an enormous test in Congress. Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said Wednesday that he would lead the Senate effort. Skeptics will note that Ronald Regan’s 1986 amnesty for nearly 3 million immigrants preceded large numbers of new arrivals and say to expect more of the same.

In a taste of what’s to come, Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, described the bill as having “open borders: Total amnesty, no regard for the health and security of Americans, and zero enforcement.”

To be clear, enforcement has expanded exponentially since the mid-1990s and will remain. Biden’s bill calls for more technology at land crossings, airports and seaports and authorizes the Homeland Security secretary to consider other steps.

Biden warned advocates last week that they should not hold him to passage within 100 days, said Domingo Garcia of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who was on a call with the president.

“Today we celebrate,” Carlos Guevara of pro-immigration group UnidosUS said Wednesday. “Tomorrow we roll up our sleeves and get to work.”

Source: Biden bets big on immigration changes in opening move

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The Good and Bad of Biden’s Plan to Legalize Illegal Immigrants

2021/01/19 Leave a comment

Of note:

Recent news reports suggest that Joe Biden will propose a series of immigration bills for Congress to consider early in his administration. The bill with the most details reported so far would legalize the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. According to the quick news summaries of the possible bill, it is a simple legalization that would grant lawful status, the ability to earn a green card in five years, and citizenship in an additional three to virtually all illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. That is a vastly simpler and cheaper way for illegal immigrants to legalize compared to the expensive and complex schemes of earlier failed reform efforts.

The Good

The good part about this bill is that mass legalization would be very positive for the United States. The United States would benefit from quickly legalizing illegal immigrants who aren’t real criminals and putting them on a path toward permanent residency and citizenship. In the short run, many opponents of immigration will be upset, but the vast reduction in the population of illegal immigrants and their successful assimilation will reduce social perceptions of chaos and increase the perception that the government has immigration firmly under control, all long term benefits for the immigration debate and the country as a whole.

Further, the usual complaints about immigration liberalization would not apply to legalizing illegal immigrants because they are already here. The lower crime rates of illegal immigrants relative to native‐​born Americans and possibly compared to legal immigrants means that we’re not going to see a surge in crime from legalization and may even see a drop in crime as a result. Also, illegal immigrants are already working in the United States with generally higher labor force participation rates than other groups, so legalizing them won’t increase wage competition with American workers because they are already here working.

Furthermore, wages would increase for illegal immigrants after they’re legalized. Work by my former colleague Andrew Forrester and I found that illegal immigrants initially faced a hefty wage penalty of about 11.3 percent relative to legal immigrants during the 1995–2017 period. Although illegal immigrant wages did converge with legal immigrants during that time, and more recent illegal immigrants entered with lower wages penalty than those that came in the past, legalization would hasten illegal immigrant and overall immigrant wage convergence with native‐​born Americans.

The bigger potential effects could be on the government’s finances. Illegal immigrants have limited access to few means‐​tested welfare programs but they already have access to public education. Legalization will increase their access to these programs once they naturalize, but it won’t increase their access to the most expensive outlays like public education. At the same time, their wages will also increase due to legalization and their U.S.-born children will have much higher levels of education and, thus, will likely pay more in taxes than receive in benefits. Therefore, it’s unclear what the net‐​fiscal impact would be and it depends on the time‐​horizon for analyzing those effects.

The good political part of this bill is that Democrats are finally playing hardball on immigration as they will not be presenting legislation already laden with compromised positions. Instead, they will start with a cleaner and simpler bill and then ask what other senators and congressmen need to get on board, which will no doubt be a lot of expensive security signaling along the border. Also, Democrats have finally learned that any pro‐​immigration piece of legislation that they introduce will immediately be called “amnesty” by its opponents, so there isn’t a political downside to introducing a real amnesty. After all, what are proponents going to say? “This time it’s a REAL amnesty” doesn’t carry the same weight.

The Bad

The policy downside of this bill is huge because it has no chance of becoming law in its current reported form. Moderate Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema aren’t likely to support it, to say nothing of the ten Republican senators necessary to pass it. A more moderate legalization is obviously better than no legalization at all. One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that we should be less strategic when thinking about immigration reform – if there is an opportunity to legalize some people or expand legal immigration then pro‐​immigration politicians must seize it at that moment rather than trying to think of how doing so makes passing other immigration reforms more difficult. Nobody knows the answer to the long term political consequences, they never have, and we should all stop pretending that we do and instead support policies that we know will be good when we can.

If the hypothesized Biden bill fails then it would also open up other possibilities. Politically, it would be a marker bill that shows where the Democratic Party stands and would be a starting point for future negotiations. That probably doesn’t have much value, but that’s the conventional strategic wisdom that I just told you to disregard in the previous paragraph.

More important is that a failure to legalize illegal immigrants in Congress will give more of a political justification for a Biden administration to take sweeping executive actions to legalize all illegal immigrants by granting them Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Under current statute, a president has the power to grant TPS to any immigrant in the United States if their home country faces a disaster.

Importantly, the statute explicitly mentions “epidemic” as such a disaster, and since all countries are suffering from COVID-19, then‐​President Biden could grant all illegal immigrants TPS. Immigration attorney and former deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration Litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil division Leon Fresco thinks this will be legally sound, and he’s probably correct. A universal grant of TPS could be undone by a future president but, at minimum, it would allow some current illegal immigrants to adjust their status to a green card and thus shrink the pool of illegal immigrants.

The major structural legal change to the immigration system under Trump is that the President now has the power to stop all legal immigration from abroad for any reason. The failure of the immigration legalization bill in Congress would allow Biden to test the power of the president to at least legalize illegal immigrants using broad existing statutory authority. Beyond that, there are many smaller actions that Biden could follow that will reduce the illegal immigrant population as detailed here by my colleague David Bier. No president should be making policy by executive decree but no president is likely to give up the power that Congress unwisely granted it, so you should expect many executive and agency actions from Biden here.

Other Legalization Ideas that Congress Should Consider

There are many ways to legalize illegal immigrants. One reform that should be included in the bill regardless of anything else is a rolling legalization that would allow long‐​term illegal immigrant residents and lawful residents without green cards to be granted green cards on an ongoing basis without an application cutoff date and based entirely on how long they’ve resided here without committing any crimes. We proposed just such a reform here based on a portion of British immigration law. This will reduce the potential for the illegal immigrant population to grow in the future.

Another way is to create a tiered legalization system that lets illegal immigrants choose whether they want to be a temporary resident, a quasi‐​permanent resident, or be on a pathway toward citizenship. The less‐​permanent means to reside here should be easier to acquire while the path toward citizenship should be harder. As evidenced by the Reagan amnesty, only 41 percent of the illegal immigrants who got a green card decided to naturalize. There’s no reason to make most current illegal immigrants who don’t want citizenship to be on that track. This proposal is less positive than legalizing all non‐​violent illegal immigrants but will likely be closer to what eventually becomes law.

Beyond legalizing illegal immigrants, the best way to guarantee that the reduction in illegal immigration that an amnesty would accomplish won’t be undone by future waves of illegal immigration is to increase lawful immigration. There’s little evidence that amnesties attract illegal immigrants. The overwhelming evidence is that expanding legal immigration reduces illegal immigration. From 2000–2018, a 1 percent increase in the number of H-2 visas for Mexicans is associated with a 1.04 percent decline in the number of Mexican illegal immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol – a finding that is statistically significant at the 1 percent level. Even nativists agree that legal immigration decreases illegal immigration. Channeling potential illegal immigrants into the legal immigration system will do the most to reduce illegal immigrant inflows in the future that will guarantee that the stock of illegal immigrants doesn’t grow.

The Biden administration has a lot of work ahead of it to undo the large number of immigration executive actions implemented by the Trump administration. Much of that work won’t earn headlines but it will be important for creating a better immigration system. On top of that, it’s heartening to see the Biden administration getting ready to hit the ground running even if their first bill has virtually no chance of becoming law as it is currently envisioned.

Source: The Good and Bad of Biden’s Plan to Legalize Illegal Immigrants

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How Executive Action Can Build a More Fair, Humane, and Workable Immigration System

2021/01/13 Leave a comment

From the Democrat think tank, the Center for American Progress, a likely indicator of what to expect from the Biden administration:

Over the past four years, the Trump administration wreaked havoc on the nation’s immigration and humanitarian protection systems, all without enacting a single law—and often in violation of existing laws. Building on a set of laws that were already outdated, overly inflexible, and poorly suited to meet the country’s realistic wants and needs, the administration made full use of the significant amount of executive authority that Congress has both explicitly and implicitly delegated to the president over many decades. As many commentators observed when looking at the administration’s relentless anti-immigrant agenda, cruelty was often the point. Now, the incoming Biden administration—which recognized early on that “we are living through a battle for the soul of this nation” and centered its presidential campaign around a pledge to “restore the soul of America”—will need to similarly use executive authority to repair much of the damage done over the past four years, as well as in previous years. By doing so, it can help build an immigration system that is more fair, humane, and workable.

Given the substantial task at hand and the nature of both the administrative state and administrative law, some of this will take time. But because the stakes are so great for so many—indeed, for the country as a whole and for its future—the work must begin immediately and it must be sustained for the duration of the administration. By the end of his first week in office, President Donald Trump had already issued three separateexecutive orders pertaining to immigration.

During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden should issue a single omnibus executive order that 1) lays out a condemnation of the damaged system that he is inheriting, 2) articulates a vision for the direction in which he will take things over the course of his term in office, and 3) makes initial, urgently needed changes consistent with that vision, including the imposition of a 100-day moratorium on deportations while the administration conducts a comprehensive review of outstanding cases and develops a set of sensible enforcement priorities.

What the first executive order on immigration should include

The executive order should begin with a high-level description of the breadth of damage done by the Trump administration, including but not limited to:

Providing a concise but comprehensive condemnation of the damage done by the Trump administration is necessary to convey to the public and to both political appointees and career staff that the Biden administration recognizes the challenge at hand and will waste no time in beginning to build immigration and humanitarian protection systems that are far better than what exists today.

The executive order should then address issues by category, articulating generally what values and objectives should guide the development of policy in each area. Where possible, it should immediately rescind executive orders and policies that run counter to those values and objectives—for example, various entry bans issued pursuant to section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the nationwide expansion of expedited removal, and the so-called asylum cooperative agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The order should also task Cabinet secretaries with the responsibility of studying different aspects of the issues within their jurisdiction and reporting back in fixed periods of time with new plans and policies consistent with the administration’s vision.

For example, the secretary of homeland security should be tasked with establishing new civil immigration enforcement guidelines; developing a range of community-based supervision programs to significantly decrease the country’s overreliance on a punitive detention system; conducting an immediate audit of the current detention population to release those at heightened risk of developing serious health consequences if they were to contract the coronavirus, as well as vulnerable populations and others for whom detention is not strictly necessary; establishing a protocol to promote cooperative enforcement strategies designed to enhance compliance with U.S. immigration laws; and reviewing extant agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, including all forms of 287(g) agreements, to begin the process of phasing them out entirely.

Similarly, the attorney general should be directed to take steps to significantly reduce the immigration court backlog by removing low-priority cases from the docket and to review immigration decisions issued by prior attorneys general and the Board of Immigration Appeals to identify cases ripe for certification and prompt reissuance to correct inconsistencies with law. In addition, the secretaries of state and health and human services should be ordered to engage stakeholders and review policies and procedures to ensure that a rebuilt U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is more resilient. The secretaries of homeland security and state, meanwhile, should develop a plan to restore an orderly and efficient asylum system that lives up to our highest ideals, including by dismantling the “Remain in Mexico” program.

While this bureaucratic process takes place and the administration studies each of these issues and designs appropriate solutions or harm-mitigation plans, it should issue a moratorium on deportations and associated detentions and arrests for a 100-day period, ensuring that enforcement actions going forward follow sensible enforcement priorities and are aligned with the new administration’s vision and values and not those of its predecessor.

Congressional engagement and steady policy rollouts in furtherance of the administration’s vision

During this time, the administration should work closely with the new Congress to use all necessary legislative tools to enact legislation without delay. This should include permanent protections for Dreamers and TPS holders—such as those covered by the American Dream and Promise Act, H.R. 6, which passed the House in 2019 with bipartisan support—as well as undocumented farm workers, who would have received protection under the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, H.R. 5038, which also passed the House in 2019 with even greater bipartisan support. Both of these bills ultimately died in the Senate under Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) leadership, but they should be high priorities for the new-look 117th Congress. In addition, as the Biden administration and Congress work to enact a long overdue national coronavirus relief and recovery package that rises to the significant challenges facing the country today, they should ensure that undocumented essential workers and their families—who continue to play an important role in the nation’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic and will play a similarly critical role in the country’s efforts to rebuild—are placed on a path to citizenship.

Of course, necessary policy changes should be announced when they are ready. For instance, the administration should, without delay, begin the process of identifying and reuniting in the United States parents and children separated under the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Additionally, as part of a broader strategy of constructive reengagement with Central America, the secretary of homeland security should issue new TPS designations for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua on account of the two unprecedented hurricanes that devastated those countries in November and exacerbated their ongoing public health and food insecurity crises.

At the conclusion of this 100-day period, the administration should be prepared to issue new policies governing future civil immigration enforcement practices. At this time, in the event that Congress does not act, the administration should also take strong executive action consistent with its ample authority under law—for instance, by granting “significant public benefit” parole in place to individuals who perform work that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security deemed essential to the critical infrastructure of the country as well as to their spouses and minor children.

Conclusion

The executive actions described above—and even the tailored legalization bills—would not eliminate the need for the significant legislative reforms required to create an immigration system that is more fair, humane, and workable and that restores faith in the rule of law. Core features of such a system would include a generous and well-functioning legal immigration system responsive to the nation’s changing needs; an asylum and refugee system that guarantees humane and efficient processing without sacrificing fairness; a new paradigm for enforcement committed to proportionality, accountability, and due process; and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and others who have long resided in this country. There must also be legal mechanisms, such as a rolling registry date, designed to prevent a recurrence of the current problem.

Collectively, these structural reforms will create an immigration system that lives up to the country’s best values, meets its realistic wants and needs, and is both capable of being followed and deserving of being enforced in a fair and just way. But the fact that legislative reforms are undeniably needed does not obviate the need or the justification for steady and aggressive use of executive authority permitted under law. In fact, the decades of legislative paralysis—and the national nightmare from which we will soon emerge—ultimately demand it.

Source: How Executive Action Can Build a More Fair, Humane, and Workable Immigration System

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Canada must fight to retain talent after Biden enters White House, Macklem says

2020/12/17 Leave a comment

Good reminder that Canada’s comparative advantage in attracting skilled workers will decrease under the Biden administration:

Canadian governments must be ready to fight a potential brain drain south of the border in the face of a new U.S. administration, Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said Tuesday.

Protectionist policies and attitudes stemming from U.S. President Donald Trump have helped make Canada a more attractive landing spot for global talent over the past four years.

But the advantage for international students and workers is likely to disappear as Trump exits the White House next month, Macklem said in a speech to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade

He says being welcoming to newcomers can help boost the economy and increase exports in goods and services needed for a recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and that Canadian schools and companies may have to fight harder to attract and retain talent after Joe Biden is sworn in as president.

But Macklem warns that fighting for talent isn’t enough on its own to create a sustainable recovery, noting that governments must also invest in infrastructure and remove internal trade barriers to help exports recover.

He says federal and provincial governments have co-operated often through the pandemic, suggesting it could finally lead to an end on inter-provincial trade hurdles that stymy the movement of goods, services and professionals.

Government infrastructure spending should focus on trade-enhancing infrastructure so exporters know there is a way to easily get their products to market, he said.

Macklem notes he met last month with leaders from several logistics companies who shared their concerns about bottlenecks, particularly at ports.

The recovery so far has seen the country recoup just over 80 per cent of the three million jobs lost during spring shutdowns and output is climbing closer to pre-pandemic levels.

Macklem says much of that rebound is being fueled by household spending, but the country will need to see a rise in exports and business investment if the recovery is to be sustainable.

The path exports take will rest on global forces, Macklem says, including whether international co-operation on vaccines and distribution break through protectionist policies.

“Obviously, we all hope that real life turns out closer to the optimistic scenario than the pessimistic. But hope is not a strategy,” reads the text of Macklem’s speech.

“We need to think strategically to increase the odds of a strong trade recovery.”

The last time Canada climbed out of a recession following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, Macklem was the second-in-command at the central bank.

Even though Canada’s recession was neither as long nor as deep as other countries, domestic exports took a sharper dive. As Macklem noted in his speech, global exports fell less than 20 per cent at the time, while Canadian exports dropped by close to 30 per cent.

The reason was a combination of weak foreign demand, particularly from our biggest trading partner in the United States, Canada’s reliance on the U.S. and other slow-growth markets instead of emerging economies largely, and a lack of competitiveness.

But while the period before that crisis was relatively positive for trade, Macklem says the same can’t be said this time around, pointing to trade disputes started by Trump.

As well, Canada’s trade in services, such as tourism, haven’t recovered as well as goods such as automobiles, even though service exports had been growing faster than goods.

What’s needed is for companies to think about what products are in demand in fast-growing markets, Macklem says. He pointed in his speech to digital services like online education and e-commerce, or applying new technology to traditional sectors.

He also says the export potential for green technology is high given global concerns about climate change.

Source: Canada must fight to retain talent after Biden enters White House, Macklem says

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The road to fix America’s broken immigration system begins abroad

2020/12/14 Leave a comment

Interesting take but not sure how realistic or how high it will be on the priority list compared to more immediate reversals of Trump immigration changes;

Being an immigrant in the United States in the past few years has been difficult, to say the least. The toxic rhetoric against immigration coming out from the White House from day one of the Trump presidency—and the fact that it enjoyed popular support by the Republican base—made many of us rethink whether it was time to simply leave this country for good. Perhaps the most salient feature of Trump’s legacy was that he and his policies put in doubt whether America will continue to hold on to its self-proclaimed title of “a country of immigrants.”

 

 

 

To summarize what the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies consisted of is: Simply put, there is no place for immigrants in America. Over the past four years, over 400 executive actions directly targeted immigration and immigrants of all backgrounds. It was not only about illegal immigration, and it was not only about unskilled foreign workers. It was a full-fledged attack on immigrants across the board.

At first, the White House went against immigrants from Muslim-majority countries in a move that many analysts early on categorized as racist. Then the White House attacked undocumented immigrants, categorizing them as criminals (despite there being abundant evidence contesting such claims) and calling for a more active deportation policy. Next, the Trump administration cut the number of admitted refugees to the United States to its lowest level in 40 years, and actively established inhumane policies to deter refugees crossing from Central America, such as separating minors from their parents and putting them in cages. Finally, claiming without evidence that the ultimate goal was protecting American jobs amid the pandemic, the Trump administration restricted the issuance of green cards and work visas for highly skilled individuals (a move that me and co-authors estimate cost over $100 billion dollars to the U.S. economy almost overnight).

One of the most obvious deductions of what we saw in the past four years is that without a robust institutional binding framework in place to administer global migration flows, any future president could do and undo as he or she pleases.

With the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, most of the world can be relieved that this circus of nonsense anti-immigration policies will come to an end. At least for now. To me, one of the most obvious deductions of what we saw in the past four years is that without a robust institutional binding framework in place to administer global migration flows, any future president could do and undo as he or she pleases. The truth is that there is too much at stake to let that happen: not only the livelihoods of about 250 million immigrants in the world—50 millions of them in America—but also the well-being of the global economy that partly relies on the hardworking and entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants wherever they are.

With the likely scenario of a Republican-controlled Senate, a divided government will make it nearly impossible for the incoming Biden-Harris administration to pass comprehensive immigration reform of the sort that the U.S. needs. For instance, offering a practical and a just path to citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants—including Dreamers—is a win-win policy: By eliminating once and for all the uncertainty of an imminent deportation, these immigrants will be more likely to make long-term investments in their children’s education, their communities, and their businesses. In addition, the government must get rid of the arbitrary yearly limit of 65,000 H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign workers, or at the very least, it must allow for the cap to increase along with the demand for skills. A similar case can be made about limits to refugee admissions. Ongoing unresolved conflicts and climate change will likely continue to push entire communities to flee their homes in search of refuge somewhere else. Furthermore, reforms such as offering permanent residence or a path to citizenship to foreign students who complete graduate school in the U.S. would also be smart policy.

But, realistically, we are unlikely to see an ambitious domestic agenda on comprehensive migration reform in the next four years. Hence, it makes sense for the incoming administration to put efforts into the international arena where, without the need for Congressional involvement, important steps can be made to construct an ambitious and robust global governance apparatus for international migration, which could serve as an important stepping stone for a domestic comprehensive migration reform down the road.

In this context, the very first action item for the Biden-Harris administration is to rejoin the United Nations’ Global Compacts for Migration and for Refugees, which despite being not much more than a multicountry declaration, under the right leadership, it can serve as the basis for establishing a system of global governance with practical policies to administer migration flows. For instance, expanding bilateral or multilateral agreements to include Global Skill Partnerships, so that immigrants can receive training before moving to better satisfy the demand for certain skills in their future destinations, or establishing an international rule system to govern refugee resettlement using market-like mechanisms, to name a couple. These practical global or regional agreements inspired by the Global Compacts should be the basis for a robust and comprehensive institutional framework to govern international migration, such as what we currently have for global trade, for example, embodied in the World Trade Organization.

If there’s something we’ve learned during the global pandemic, it is that in order to better deal with the challenges ahead, we need more—not less—global governance and cooperation. This is even more relevant when it comes to immigration, a global flow that will continue to grow. Thus, if the U.S. cannot fix its immigration system at home, it must again lead the way to bring the world together on designing and putting forward the best policies to let immigrants, wherever they are and wherever they come from, achieve their full potential. And for that, the work begins abroad.

Source: The road to fix America’s broken immigration system begins abroad

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Universities urge Biden to end curbs on foreign students

2020/11/30 Leave a comment

Not surprising and warranted with respect to the curbs:

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE), has written to United States President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on behalf of 43 US university associations calling on them to move to ensure that American colleges and universities are “once again, the destination of choice for the world’s best international students and scholars”.

To accomplish this aim, Mitchell says the Biden administration should move to: 

• Withdraw the proposed regulations that would limit an international student’s ‘duration of status’ and create a fixed duration of admission. Mitchell says there is no evidence to suggest that such a restriction is required or that the issues raised cannot be addressed through the existing Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

“The amount of time the Trump administration proposes to give students is less than the average amount of time it takes an international student to complete his or her education. Such a policy is not fair to international students or institutions,” Mitchell says. 

• Withdraw the interim final rules and the proposed rule that make it harder and more expensive for individuals to receive H-1B visas. These new requirements imposed by both the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security were finalised without allowing for public comment, Mitchell says. 

“The business and higher education communities vigorously oppose the proposed rules, and two lawsuits have already been filed to block them. In addition, the proposed rule regarding subject caps will make it difficult for recent international students graduating from US institutions to participate in the H-1B programme.” 

• Make clear that the Optional Practical Training (OPT) programme remains in place as it was at the end of the Obama administration. The Trump administration’s constant signalling that it might change OPT created a serious disincentive for students to enrol in post-secondary education in the United States, Mitchell says. 

Most international students see the OPT programme as a transitional stage to obtaining an H-1B visa. More than 5,000 assistant professors and over 1,700 research associates hold H-1B visas, according to an online visa tracker. The H-1B visa programme is one of the very few pathways for foreign-born researchers to remain in the United States on a long-term basis. 

The demands are among a list of steps that Mitchell says “could and should” be undertaken quickly by the new US administration once it is sworn in in January.

In the open letter, ACE President Mitchell says: “First and foremost, we welcome and applaud the announcement that the Biden administration will move quickly to reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections that the Trump administration repealed. 

“We hope that your administration will take steps to make the DACA protections permanent and will work with you to support whatever measures are necessary to accomplish this worthy goal.”

An estimated 450,000 undocumented immigrants are college students and about half of those are eligible for the DACA programme.

In addition to DACA, Mitchell said the associations believe that the Biden administration should take immediate action in a number of areas to terminate, revise or replace a number of decisions that the Trump administration has put in place regarding higher education. 

He called on the Biden administration to work with all stakeholders to address “aspects of the Title IX regulations [the law against sex discrimination in education provision] that are deeply problematic and that micromanage campus processes in an inflexible manner and undermine college and university efforts to effectively, fairly and compassionately address the problem of campus sexual assault”. 

In particular, Mitchell said, the administration “should eliminate the mandate for a live hearing with cross examination, which could have a chilling effect on the willingness of survivors to come forward and raises serious concerns about re-traumatisation”.

Foreign gift reporting requirements

He also demanded a halting of the expanded reporting requirements, including the new Information Collection Request (ICR) and Notice of Interpretation (NOI) on Section 117, which relates to conditions of transparency and reporting of institutions’ foreign gifts or contracts worth US$250,000 or more. 

The higher education associations regard the new interpretation imposed by the Department of Education as part of an effort to expand those reporting requirements beyond existing requirements. The ACE letter says the Higher Education Act prescribes the information that institutions are required to disclose, and, in the absence of a regulation, the Education Department has no authority to impose new requirements beyond those in statute. 

The letter also accuses the Trump administration of launching “politically motivated” investigations of higher education institutions conducted by political appointees. Examples given include investigations launched by the department’s Office of the General Counsel of “racism at Princeton” and “academic freedom at UCLA”.

Mitchell said: “The [Education] Department’s response to instances of insufficient institutional reporting should have focused on reporting remediation to enhance the intended transparency rather than launching investigations that forced institutions to invest scarce resources in responding to burdensome document requests that sought information beyond the statutory authority.”

Limits on the effectiveness of student aid

Mitchell called for the withdrawal of the interim final rules regarding the eligibility of higher education students for funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security or CARES Act. Mitchell said this rule “contradicts congressional intent as to which students should be eligible for the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund and limits the effectiveness of such aid”.

In order to “enhance the integrity” of student aid programmes, he called on the Biden administration to rewrite the rules to protect the risk to students and taxpayers and ensure that students’ financial aid eligibility is limited to “quality programmes”.

The letter calls for the reinstatement of Obama-era guidance on the use of race in admissions and the immediate termination of the Department of Justice’s “unprecedented demand that Yale University cease any consideration of race in its admissions practices”. 

Mitchell says: “There is no evidence that Yale is in violation of Supreme Court decisions that bear on this issue.”

Similarly, ACE calls on the Department of Justice to withdraw its support for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. 

“The trial and appellate court decisions, both of which found for Harvard, have established a clear and compelling record that Harvard is in no way violating the law,” Mitchell says.

The letter also calls for the repeal of the Executive Order on Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency and Accountability at Colleges and Universities and the portion of regulations related to that order included in the Education Department’s 23 September 2020 final rule, “Direct Grant Programs, State-Administered Formula Grant Programs…” 

Mitchell said: “Colleges and universities are committed to free inquiry and academic freedom. It is improper for federal officials, including those at the Education Department, to insert their own political judgments about what speech should or should not be permitted on campus. 

“In fact, federal law specifically prohibits the Education Department from interfering in academic matters.”

Mitchell also demanded the repeal of the president’s Executive Order on Race and Sex Stereotyping. “Needless to say, colleges and universities are totally opposed to race and sex stereotyping, but the executive order is sweepingly overbroad and has chilled the implementation of critical diversity training programmes that ensure more respectful and productive work and learning environments,” Mitchell writes.

Source: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20201128102119141

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